


scribbling on the sky

by TolkienGirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, F/M, Gen, Grief, Non-Linear Narrative, Redbeard gets mentioned, Stream of Consciousness, because what is grief-fic without Redbeard, major angst, obviously because we are all dead inside, title from W.H. Auden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.For nothing now can ever come to any good.-W.H. Auden





	

****

Pain seems sensible, focused, and important. Life is unspooled in shimmering Fate-thread, with the cruel and busy scissors working along every strand. Pain is a second in time and a century in memory, the silver gleam of a needle working up your arm.

You have missed that. You always miss it, except when you need it.

Then you remember how much you hate it.

 

Everything about the inside of your mind has always felt exactly the same. You excavate more of it, and close off other parts, but they have always all been there. You have dull, aching dreams. You welcome the rush of poison in your veins because it brings you back to Redbeard, sea air in your lungs and—

If there _is_ a God, he is a monstrous one for allowing you so many happy returns in life.

 

Mary, you loved.

You weren’t supposed to. You learned a long time ago that you weren’t supposed to love anyone.

Somehow, that did not stop you.

(It stopped Mary.)

 

You are Sherlock Holmes. You’ve always used that as a shield, an exclamation point, and now, a gunshot wound. It does you no good anymore. You used to be on top of the world—you _were_ everyone’s world when you fell.

Strange, how much more grief makes some people matter. And some, how less.

You were Sherlock Holmes.

You are alone, and you hate it. That is the fact about your mind; it is always the same, and you have always been lonely. You taught yourself not to be, but you never learned.

 

Death, it turns out, does not find you in Samarra.

You, instead, find Death.

 

You forgive rather easily when it is the right thing to do.

It is, however, only the right thing very rarely. You forgave Mary’s angled shot in an instant, in as long as it took for you to fall the right way. She could have killed you, and she didn’t. It never mattered a bit more than that.

John, though. John is everything you are not. He forgives much and holds few transgressions.

Few and far between, you find yourself.

You find, too, that you have killed all your friends. Snuffed them out like candlewicks; tapping out the ashes of their trust in you along every sidewalk, every dent and whine of wind and rain and the sound of the streets.

London is your city, but it no longer knows you. Who were you, and are you?

 _Norbury, Norbury, Norbury._ Your pride flourished with your love, and they choked each other out.

 

Tragedy is not itself without shame. And you are not yourself with tragedy. You wonder when this might have ended. If you had never taken the plunge, or never returned. If Mary had never found John.

If you had been content to take Mycroft’s payments, hold down a much better flat, and never known—

 

John was supposed to be a constant. You destroyed him.

So did Mary, but Mary is gone. It is the living who carry the weight of the dead.

 

You were supposed to be dead. You _were_ dead. They loved you then.

And you were Sherlock Holmes, then, and so you let them.


End file.
